The proposal suggests that BNN invest in registrational interactivity research to understand how to use social media and alter their TV programs. Data would be collected from BNN's Hyves network to better understand their target audience. Viewers would be engaged online to provide input that could influence BNN's programming, increasing happiness and the size of BNN's social network. A team of researchers would oversee the project over 8 weeks at an estimated total cost.

1. BUSINESS
PROPOSAL
Romy Verstraeten // 324802 // EUR // Trends&Strategies in the
Creative Sector // M. Leenderste // week 8 // final assignment

2. Management summary
My proposal to BNN is to invest in registrational interactivity to research in what
way they can use the social media and to what extend BNN should alter their
programs, benefiting both their revenue and the ‘happiness’ of their consumers.
The business proposal will be discussing recent reasarch on television and
happiness more in dept, as well as the topics social media, ITV and interactivity.
All data collected from the BNN Hyves will be registered to give a more concrete
model of BNN’s main target group. This target-identity will be used as a main
example to see exactly how the individual would like to contribute to BNN’s
programs.
Data will be collected from Hyves and if possible and as an extent to this, online
and offline enquiries can be included as well. An analysis will be formulated on
the results and topics will be addressed to the target group. The topics will
contain a ‘personal power component’ to enhance the individual with the idea he
himself contributes to the TV-program and be projected on the preferences of the
target group. Individuals will be working together online on these topics,
increasing their social happiness level and BNN’s registrational interactivity. In
this way, BNN’s social network will be ranging wider and wider, leading to even
more data which can benefit BNN. Overall, the research project should take 8
weeks to be completed.
The background research that was used as a set up for this proposal is also
included in the total business proposal. The accompanying finance sheet will
provide an overview of all estimated costs.
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3. Content
page-number
Management summary
Research question 3
Recent research 4
Non-explored field 9
Finance sheet 12
Literature 13
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4. Research question
As an introduction to this business proposal, I first
would first like to address the key question to my
research. ‘How can BNN use social media to enrich
their TV-programs?’
This will be answered due to defining social media
and connecting this to television. Although the ITV
(Interactive Television) is a relatively new research field, many broadcasters and
programmers are trying to integrate this phenomenon into their company. So
keeping up with the latest trend, how can BNN be sure of a positive impact?
There’s one simple answer. Happiness.
Success and most importantly, the continuation of being successful, is much
depended on the happiness of an individual. Therefore, it’s of upmost importance
to know about the correlation between TV and happiness.
As TV is a part of our home, it as well is part of our lives. In what way will TV
affect us even more, e.g. at work?
To investigate these topics, the first step will be filling our minds with recent
research in order to come up with ideas which are combining all gathered
information. The main business proposal will be discussed in more detail and
include all finances.
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5. Recent research
In recent years, the research on happiness in economics has been stimulated up
most. Happiness is considered to be a important issue in our daily life, if not the
most important one. Frey and Stutzer (2004) quote “How to gain, how to keep,
how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive for
all they do” (James 1902, p. 76). From this they derive that the pursuit of
happiness is determining a large part of human behavior. Therefore, economics
should also partly be about happiness given it’s such an important factor within
the process of decision-making. The big question considering research within in
this field is how economic factors, such as economic growth, unemployment and
institutions affect individual well-being? (Frey and Stutzer; 2004: 2)
Up until now, economists have been holding back on direct research on individual
happiness. They do not feel the need to take utility measurement to a higher level
including happiness, because they can see the reactions to e.g. price changes in
other outcome factors such as purchasing power. Not taking happiness into
account means they miss out on why people react to these changes in the way
reported by outcome numbers. Economist keep on to the tradition of making
welfare decisions according to the Pareto criterion and therefore no further
division by welfare levels of individuals in considered relevant.
Unfortunately, this remains to be the dominating view in economics. However,
this view is challenged numerous times and in numerous ways by scholars all
over the world. Non-objective economists incorporate emotions, self-signaling
(self-esteem), goal completion, mastery, meaning and status into their analyses.
If you want to manage explaining human behavior through utility functions they
should be interdependent. Using independent, interpersonal ones do not make
up for personal factors which are left out. In behavioral economics it is
discussable if you can or can not derive utility from observed decisions. By only
looking at the choice itself, rather then looking into why it was made, we can not
accurately judge the utility solely on those outcomes. (Frey and Stutzer; 2004: 3)
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6. But how can we measure happiness? This is a challenge to the traditional
economic thinking. Economists put up one single question so the survey is
representative. The answer is rated as a score and indicates an individual’s
evaluation of their personal life satisfaction and happiness. A nice example would
be the question which the German Socio-Economic Panel asked. ‘How satisfied
are you with your life, all things considered?’ The responses range on a scale
from 0 “completely dissatisfied” to 10 “completely satisfied”. (Frey and Stutzer;
2004: 4)
The knowledge that loyal TV-watchers’ decisions are so much influenced by their
leisure-time investment, throws us directly into the world of advertising and
consumer behavior, a thoroughly researched field by economists. Although
economists are digging deep into this particular topic, they have largely ignored
the effects of television on individual happiness from an economic perspective.
L. Bruni and L. Stanca (2008) have researched this topic though, and argue that
viewing television has a negative impact on individual happiness by harming and
(partially) replacing relationships with other people. The inclusion and importance
of happiness within economic research is a fairly new way of integrating
economics with psychology and is represented by the behavioral economics
nowadays. According to this behavioral economics approach, the use of
television does not have a good impact on ones level of happiness. Bruni and
Stanca (2008) for example, claim that by watching television, time spend with
family and friends decreases, the communication level within households drops
and material aspirations increase significantly due to the overload of images that
consist of luxury items. So it seems that consumers’ build up desire for better
cars, jewelry, houses, electronic devices and other material assets which they
cannot purchase.
This is primarily making them more miserable and less contented then they would
be without watching television and television ads. (Bruni and Stanza; 2008: 510)
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7. The creative industries are fighting for the leisure time which is decreasing
among employees, especially in the time of crisis. It also seems everyone’s to
busy scheduling their lives, how to put everything into so little time?
Watching television is a huge part of leisure time consumption, on average it
absorbs the same amount of an individual’s working time. Little economic
research has been done within this matter. (Corneo, 2005:110)
Corneo (2005) found out that the time people spend on work and the time they
spend on watching television are positively correlated (Corneo, 2005: 110). When
the amount of working hours goe up, the time that is left for leisure decreases.
Surprisingly enough, the hours of watching television still rise. Television still is
an important aspect in everyday life and therefore has great impact on the
economic and social life of its users. It can shape, adjust and influence the
(economic) decisions of its loyal users.
But why do we choose watching television over other leisure activities?
Individuals seem to enjoy TV as a ‘rest’ from their long day at work. Laying on
your couch appeals more then a intensive work-out with a friend, going shopping
with your mother-in-law or attending dance-lessons. The effort we need to put in
the solely activity of watching TV is much less then the effort we need to put in
into other more intensive activities and therefore our first choice, even though it
actually doesn’t increase our happiness level. (Corneo, 2005:111)
Up until now, it has been assumed that the self-control problems concerning TV
consumption has affected everyone in the same way. Recent research has
pointed out that different types of individuals suffer more from unnecessary time-
loss while watching TV than others. In particular individuals who can make up
their own working hours/leisure time schedule, like the self-employed or high
positions, have high opportunity costs when it comes to time. Wasting time on TV
means losing time which could have been more profitable (e.g. could have raised
profit). Therefore, an important footnote is ‘that TV consumption lowers the life
satisfaction of individuals with high opportunity costs of time, while it has a
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8. smaller negative effect on the life satisfaction of individuals with low opportunity
costs of time.’ (Frey et al; 2007: 296)
Social media is the term used referring to all the applications which are
concentrated on the sharing of information between people. Social networks on
the Internet are accessing individuals to send instant messages to each other.
Traditional interaction media such as newspapers are much less multifunctional
compared to the Internet. By means of social platforms, podcasts, music, videos
and pictures can easily be transferred to each other online. Some examples of
international social internet media are YouTube and Facebook, but also
Wikipedia and MySpace. A good Dutch example is Hyves, but BNN already
discovered this and is covering the field. Social Network Sites (SNS) can be
defined as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public profile
within a bounded system. This kind of system displays a list of other users, which
share the same interests. Mostly, these persons can be added to your personal
‘buddy’ list, constructing a social network. (Boyd & Ellison, 2007)
Peter Hirschberg (2009) is an entrepreneur and marketing specialist who has a
lot of know-how about content production and both online and offline media. He
has published his opinion in a TEDtalk about the battle of attention between the
television and the computer. In this talk he asked three little girls about they felt
about the use of internet on one hand and watching television on the other.
They answered: "Internet is more fun then TV. Nowadays, we have TV shows on
the computer and you can download them onto your iPod. I wouldn’t like to be the
president of a TV network because eventually they’re going to lose all their
money" (Hirshberg, P. TED, 2009)
Interactivity has become the key factor when it comes down to new media.
Traditional media don’t offer enough versatility and possibilities to consumers no
more; it’s all about as much as possible in as less as possible devices. The term
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9. interactivity referrers to ‘more powerful sense of user engagement with media
texts, a more independent relation to sources of knowledge, individualized media
use, and greater user choice’ (Lister et al., 2009: 25) There are different forms of
interactivity: hypertextual, immersive navigation, immersive interaction and
registrational interactivity. The one we’ll address to is registrational interactivity,
it’s the ability of individuals to add to, change or synthesize text received or
already published by others. (Lister et al., 2009: 22)
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10. Non-explored field
BNN has to connect this information to their own company structure. As BNN has
developed a certain social online network at Hyves, they can directly access their
response group. All the data that’s provided by personal profiles can benefit BNN
to understand the needs of their consumers.
Bruni and Stanza (2008) concluded that watching television actually decreases
our individual happiness. Relational interaction with other people goes down due
to the fact we’d rather watch television in that scarce free time. Even if our
working hours increase, we keep on watching television, actually it increases just
the same. Let’s say we gain more happiness from work by interacting with
colleagues, we immediately turn in that happiness by watching television.
(Corneo; 2005: 112) It may not benefit us as individuals, but how can BNN turn
this knowledge into profit?
First of all, Corneo (2005) already showed us that, despite of the competition,
individuals are quite loyal to their television, even if their leisure time is
decreasing. Second, the negative correlation between happiness and watching
television can be altered into a positive correlation by increasing people’s
interpersonal relationships and therefore their communication level.
Interactive TV is able to switch the pressured relationship between television and
happiness into an uplifting one. BNN should not try to invent new ways of
interacting themselves but should take advantage of the already existing
distribution channels and integrate these social components such as games,
(live) discussion platforms and consumer video broadcasting within their
programs. These social interactions can increase communication levels either
within one household of between multiple households.
With this, individuals will now gain more happiness from watching TV by
upgrading their social interaction with others. Off course, relationships can not be
replaced, but can be found on Television-Text applications.
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11. The consumer needs to have the idea that he can (partially) alter and control
television input and output and therefore is able to add a personal touch, instead
of being controlled via the boundaries of his remote control.
BNN should not try to come up with clever, but also costly inventions of their own
to secure their position within the interactive media field, but they should use
interactive components which their audience is already familiar with and
contribute to the individual’s happiness.
My proposal to BNN is to invest in registrational interactivity to research in what
way they can use the social media and to what extend BNN should alter their
programs, benefiting both their revenue and the ‘happiness’ of their consumers.
As said before, BNN has got some assets to start developments in their own
structure.
All data collected from Hyves will be registered to give a more concrete model of
BNN’s main target group. This target-identity will be used as a main example to
see exactly how the individual would like to contribute to BNN’s programs.
The inter-medium use is the most important part of my proposal. The individual
should actively be involved into the production process. Via the internet website,
individuals should meet up, construct their opinion and actually see the results
from their ‘work’ on television.
Also, I emphasize the interaction between more individuals as an extent to the
research of Corneo (2005) as well as Frey et al. (2007). The ‘happiness’ factor
isn’t integrated into TV-programming yet. Therefore I suggest further research on
how the individuals linking in to BNN through Hyves, can work together as a part
of BNN. In a way, BNN ‘employs’ their consumers to their own benefit, without
paying any costs over that process.
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12. Connecting people together, through the medium BNN is providing them, should
increase their happiness. The direct effect will be more and more people in
BNN’s social network, causing more interaction. Overall, this interaction should
help BNN to construct more interesting TV-programs and lead to higher viewing
rates. The financial issues related to the cost and the team which should be
formatted is all discussed further more in the finance sheet which is included in
this business proposal.
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13. Finance sheet
To execute the proposed research BNN should appoint both senior and junior
researchers. The junior researcher, for instance project-based internship, will
cover the arranging of all data collected from Hyves. If possible, the junior
researcher can also extent the data with online and offline enquiries. The senior
researcher will give an analysis on the results and come up with topics that will
be addressed to the target group. The topics will contain a ‘personal power
component’ to enhance the individual with the idea he himself contributes to the
TV-program and be projected on the preferences of the target group.
Individuals will be working together online on these topics, increasing their social
happiness level and BNN’s registrational interactivity. In this way, BNN’s social
network will be ranging wider and wider, leading to even more data which can
benefit BNN.
The medior researchers will be supervising the online projects; they will report
upcoming results and pass them to the senior researchers. It’s the senior
researchers’ job to integrate the results as a component of a TV-program of BNN,
so the target group will actually see their influences. The research project will
take place over an period of 8 weeks.
Working hours Tarif per hour Total per Total all
per week week weeks
Junior 10 € 21 € 210 € 1680
researchers
Medior 6 € 44 € 264 € 2112
researchers
Senior 8 € 83 € 664 € 5312
researchers
Estimated € 1100
additional
costs
Project total € 10. 204
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14. Literature
1. Bruni, L. & Stanza, L. 2008. Watching alone: Relational goods, television and
happiness. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 65. 506-528
2. Corneo, G. 2005. Work and television. European Journal of Political Economy 21.
99-113
3. Frey, B & Stutzer, A. 2004. Happiness Research: State and Prospects. Review of
Social Economy 62. 207-228
4. Frey, B, Benesch, C & Stutzer, A. 2007. Does watching television make us
happy? Journal of Economic Psychology 28. 283–313
5. Shirky, C. 2008. Gin, television and cognitive surplus. www.shirky.com
6. Hirschberg, P. 2009. Peter Hirschberg on TV and the web. TEDtalk.
www.ted.com
7. Lister, A. Dovey, J. Giddings, S. Grant, I & Kelly, K. (2009). New media. A Critical
Introduction. New York: Routledge
8. Boyd, D. M. & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and
scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html /
9. Dijk, van J. The network society: social aspects of new media. Jan van Dijk.
London, New Delhi and Thousand Oaks California: 2006.
10. Social Media Televsion. www.youtube.com/user/SocialMediaTV &
www.socialmediatelevision.com
11. Jensen, J. F. Interactive Television: New Genres, New Format, New Content.
DiMedia
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15. Self reflection
Collecting all literature wasn’t that hard at all, even though it seemed so much at
first. The main problem was pointing out all correlations between the researches.
Maybe, this hasn’t been done to the fullest extent, but in I think it becomes
clearer in the actual business proposal and the finance sheet.
The hardest part of this business proposal to me was coming up with the
estimated costs. I really had no idea and you can’t find anything about it on the
internet. I can imagine that my calculations will be ridiculous compared to ‘the
real world’, I hope we’ll discuss this in class.
When I started writing, I thought I’d never managed to come up with 10 pages of
empirical writing. During my writing, it became clear to me that I couldn’t use all
my ideas, some sources even made the overall structure of the proposal less
clear. The point I did not address was citizen journalism. The main reason for this
was that I personally thought my research was also complete without it.
Overall I really enjoyed this assignment; it was completely new to me. I’m happy
with the end-result and I hope I’ve matched up the realistic lay-out of a business
proposal.
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